Sounds like the kinda fraud that makes for no-knock raids in the early morning. Of course it is difficult to make a case if you never use the laughable barrier that is judicial consent to search.
In every country in the world, transferring money out of a company when you are aware of future financial liabilities that put it into bankruptcy many times over trivially pierces the veil.
Purdue would immediately declare insolvency with just any one settlement. These transfers are the first big-item ticket you would be looking at.
In which year was Purdue supposed to be aware of future financial liabilities that put it into bankrupcy? The deal was reached last Wednesday and yes, maybe it has been in the making for a while, but how long? The best I can deduce from Wikipedia is that a few states filed suit in May 2018 and another 30 jumped on by Jan 2019, and the earliest mention of the settlement was that it was in-progress in August 2019.
The Sacklers' biggest self-payments were in 2008-2011 per the article's figure and actually got smaller in later years, with data only through 2016.
It's not clear that at any point for which we have data, the Sacklers "knew" their company was facing future financial liabilities that put it into bankrupcy. Did they make self-payments from August 2019 on? I don't think the article says either way.
While they might be rich, reprehensible people who made money by selling legal, but highly addictive drugs - its not as if they tried to pull money out just before a huge liability came up.
I feel like pulling money out while you're engaged in behavior a reasonable person would assume might lead to future litigation... stretches the "We didn't know!" defense.
They and others were engaged in massive production and sale of opiates, even as the news reported increasing number of opiate deaths.
I'm not in favor of pinning everything on the last unlucky bastard standing around, but taking profits now when you can expect future corporate liabilities should be illegal.
> I feel like pulling money out while you're engaged in behavior a reasonable person would assume might lead to future litigation... stretches the "We didn't know!" defense.
As the sibling comment says, anyone or any corporation with assets is a target for potential future litigation, with or without merit. That cannot be the basis for what makes profit-taking fraudulent, or companies could never pay owners a dividend.
> They and others were engaged in massive production and sale of opiates, even as the news reported increasing number of opiate deaths.
I basically disagree with this premise. The media reporting on opiate deaths is misleading.
* IMO, production and sale of opiates is broadly a public good. To the extent that people are suffering, and opiates are an effective treatment for that pain, having opiates available is a boon. Some of the recent restrictions on prescribing due to the "crisis" are overbearing for the majority of doctors and patients, and probably cause net increase in suffering in the country.
* Rate of conversion from on-label opioid prescription to addiction ("opioid use disorder") is lowish; this metastudy[1] claims 8-12% on average, but the 95% CI is anywhere from 3-17% and I'm not sure what they're measuring the percentage of (i.e., long-term prescriptions might both be more represented in the data and have higher conversion rates) — I doubt 8-12% of people who get 3 days of vicodin for their wisdom teeth extraction develop an opiate use disorder. They also point out that some studies showed misuse rates below 1% and "significant variability remains in this literature." We should expect these rates to fall as tighter prescription quantities from the last several years impact "leftover" pill rates.
* The rate of conversion from prescription opioid addiction to heroin is low; 4-6% per the government.[2]
* Overall opioid-involved overdose annual deaths in the US rose from 8000 in 1999 to 47600 in 2017; of those, the prescription-involved number rose by 13600 deaths (+300%), from 3400. Conversely, the non-prescription-involved deaths rose from by 26000 deaths (+465%), from 4600.[3](Figs 3-4) 26000/39600 = ~66%. (The population has also grown about 17% over that period, but that doesn't change the calculus too much.)
* Therefore: the overall growth pattern in opioid deaths in the last two decades is largely accounted for by heroin and other non-Rx use, which are a tiny population with a very high (and rising) death rate. The rising death rate is mostly due to the surge in black market sale of fentanyl as "heroin."[3] (esp. figures 4-5 and associated text) (Perhaps as a result of DEA and other restriction on the supply of the relatively safer, but less dense, heroin, and restriction on supply of the vastly safer prescription opioids.)
* Notably, the number of non-fentanyl-involved prescription opioid-involved deaths has actually been in decline since 2011![3] (fig. 4.), despite a rising population. Let me echo that since it's really important: prescription opioid-involved overdose, ex fentanyl, both in number and per capita rate, HAS BEEN IN DECLINE SINCE 2011! Why doesn't any news story on opioids in the US headline with that? The primary reason the overall prescription opiate-involved death rate hasn't tracked that decline is rising co-(ab)use with illicit fentanyl, and its relatively higher death rate.
If we could wave a magic wand and wipe (illicit) fentanyl off the earth, our annual opioid death rate would fall by something like half.
Given we don't have a magic wand, what can we do? Obviously we can't stop fentanyl from entering our borders or being synthesized illicitly here. We can (and have) leaned on illicit fentanyl-producing countries like China and Mexico to make those businesses less lucrative. We can do harm reduction things for the vulnerable population — which is mostly heroin users. We could legalize he...
Those states didn't just say "oh hi, BTW, we are suing you today". Suits were filled as the result of years upon years of failed attempts to minimize the harm of over enthusiastic opiate prescription, etc. And it is fairly well documented that Purdue's "self policing" system was an absolute sham intended only to keep the lawyers away as long as possible. In fact most of their "efforts" consisted of identifying problem physicians, documenting them, and then -sitting on the files- until the doctor was arrested/subjected to licensing hearings and -then- turning them over so it looked like they were trying to do the right thing all along when in reality they were just doing this for show. And documentation exists going back a decade or more of the Sacklers direct involvement in designing and overseeing the implementation of all this in a very hands on manner.
stefan_'s comment suggests that the the wire transfers were (a) from the company and (b) after the Sacklers were aware the company was facing bankrupcy. But the article makes neither of these claims.
Your comment does not help make that case for corporate accounting fraud, because none of that context suggests to any reasonable person that an immensely profitable company is facing imminent bankrupcy.
The Sacklers's aggressive sales tactics were awful and I get that people hate them and don't like seeing them "get away with it." But this article does not illustrate a crime.
I get your point, but I don't see where conversation is intrinsically limited to "this specific article" and not the topic in general.
> that an immensely profitable company is facing imminent bankrupcy.
An immensely profitable company with multiple states and individuals lined up to sue it, whose principals know that they engaged in repeated (many already known) acts of deception and fraud to earn a non-negligible portion of profits, who were at the highest levels and thereby cannot claim ignorance is entirely likely to realize that should an adverse judgment be entered into, the damages may well approach a level that threatens solvency.
Realize that we're not just talking awful, aggressive sales tactics. We're talking willful deception and active hiding, obfuscating of research that showed increased levels of addiction that were instead being marketed as less addictive, more beneficial, in the context of a medical product. Aggressive sales tactics are what car dealers do. Wilful, fraudulent misrepresentation of the benefits and side effects of a prescription drug, to the detriment of individuals and societies, is a whole other level.
Wiring money to yourself right before declaring bankruptcy and telling the creditors "Oh darn, I don't have any money" is absolutely a form of fraud.
Purdue is going to declare bankruptcy eminently, that is one reason the settlements here are so soft - the government is trying to get what it can before they offshore everything.
I agree that what you describe is fraud, but I don't believe that's what the article is talking about.
To elaborate, I don't see where the article states they wired money from their company to their private accounts right before declaring bankrupcy. The article instead seems to be describing shuffling of their personal assets between accounts.
Originally the State's Attornies were fighting for a significant portion of the settlement to come from their personal wealth and not the company. Family's offer was just company assets and none of their personal wealth.
I don't believe your comment is responsive to the thread.
My contention is that nothing in this article shows or even purports that the Sacklers committed a corporate accounting crime. Apparently people disagree with the position but I haven't seen any greatly articulated arguments why I'm mistaken.
Wiring around your own lawfully obtained money isn't a crime. Taking profits from your private company that isn't facing bankrupcy (2008-2016) broadly isn't a crime.
Negotiating a different deal with State's Attornies than the highest offering bid by the SA's also isn't a crime. It's not the family's lowest offer; it's the mutually-agreed settlement.
There's a lot of reason not to like the Sacklers or Purdue Pharma! And there's a lot of reasons they should maybe lose some money or go to jail! Those reasons are just unrelated to the contents of this article — which is stirring up shit that looks bad to laypeople but isn't criminal.
My comment was adding context and presenting motive as to why they might be moving money around. The Sacklers were/are potentially facing fines against their personal wealth, not just the company's wealth.
So the potential exists for them to commit a crime should they face personal fines. It's not uncommon for people to hide assets during legal proceedings to reduce their liability.
There's a reason, when someone is under investigation, that they're not allowed to leave the country because it's easy to just not come back if they're charged. The same applies to money, it's easy to make money inaccessible which is why assets are often frozen during criminal probes.
but attempting to understate your wealth for purposes of liability is a huge crime. this article is basically telling us that they're dramatically understating their wealth to minimize the settlement damage.
> attempting to understate your wealth for purposes of liability is a huge crime.
Is it? Does being more wealthy increase your liability in some way? Is the huge crime a federal or state crime, and can you point me to any reference? (I'm sure claiming to be insolvent and unable to pay a civil suit when you have hidden assets is a type of fraud. But, that is not what happened here. Forbes estimates the family's worth at about $13 billion; no one is making the claim that they are bankrupt or unable to pay settlements / judgments.)
In general, in the US, wealth is private information between you and the IRS. There are judicial exceptions, certainly — you can't lie about your wealth in sworn testimony at trial, for example. But the Sacklers' suits did not go to trial — they settled outside of court.
> this article is basically telling us that they're dramatically understating their wealth to minimize the settlement damage.
$1 billion over a period of 10 years is not a huge chunk of $13 billion, IMO; and that's just the amounts moved a decade ago. It isn't clear all of it ended up "hidden." I'm also not sure of the mechanism by which understating your wealth minimizes settlement damage unless you actually claim insolvency.
The article addresses what the news is. it is quite notable that anyone would move $1bb out of the US while facing the possibility of HUGE civil judgements. Moreover, my reading is that this money was routed in such a way that it looks like obfuscation, a key component of money laundering.
More concisely, here is a quote, directly from the article:
"But the attorneys general of a majority of states, including New York and Massachusetts, are balking at the proposed deal, contending that the Sackler family has siphoned off company profits that should be used to pay for the billions of dollars in damage caused by opioids."
From the article: "It was unclear whether Ms. James’s initial findings of new Sackler funds would influence the parties that have agreed to the settlement. "
The article suggests but does not claim that the money movement was any kind of laundering (and unlikely to be structuring, just in terms of the sheer number of transactions required to send $1 Bil at 9,999$/pop).
You are correct, and I should have clarified. There is not enough evidence here for the New York Times to suggest laundering, that is my coloring of the situation.
If I had multiple billions of dollars in one country like the Sacklers, I certainly would move a few billion out of that country to shield against country risk. Yes, the US is one of the safest places to have assets, but it's also got a runaway spending habit. Moving less than 10% out just to shield you from the off chance that the US does something that hurts your wealth is just common sense.
As someone pointed out elsewhere, a lot of this money was moved out almost a decade ago, well before there was the possibility of huge civil judgements.
> ... suggesting that the family tried to shield wealth as it faced a raft of litigation over its role in the opioid crisis.
If you are not aware of the reporting on Purdue and how they directly contributed to the opioid crisis, start with this fantastic exposé from the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
They didn’t directly contribute to the opioid crisis. At worst they were found guilty of deceptive marketing which is obviously highly political considering doctors ultimately prescribed them. Purdue wasn’t running commercials telling consumers to take OxyContin. Blaming Purdue for the opioid crisis is absurd. They make the drug, the doctors choose to buy and prescribe them, and people choose to take them at the advice of their doctor. How does Purdue have more responsibility than doctors and addicts?
Nobody addicted to opium was “tricked” into it. All legal opium is prescribed by a licensed doctor for godsakes!
Fining them isn’t helping people with opiate addiction. If we were to bankrupt the Sackler family tomorrow nobody addicted to opium is magically going to kick the habit.
As someone who is healthcare adjacent they absolutely directly contributed to the opioid crisis.
Highly addictive drugs aren't a thing you just start and stop taking... Opioids are intensely addictive and Purdue repeatedly marketed Oxycotin as a non-addictive Opioid, there is even video of a Sackler talking about how much the sales team should be pushing the non-addictive qualities[1] as a benefit when dealing with Doctors. They also used the ye olde drug rep hard sell sales tactics to push it on Doctors in exchange for monetary compensation and in kind compensation when the US made direct monetary compensation illegal.
Purdue is a huge part of this crisis, but they shouldn't be singled out - the marketing that pharma companies engage is constantly contributing to the ill health of Americans through toxicity, unnecessary side effects, stress from financial pressures and, sometimes, direct poisoning.
Please do a bit more research into this crisis and it's causes.
1. Specifically, false qualities that Purdue actively hide evidence of.
I’ve worked plenty with drug addiction and am a recovering addict.
The idea that marketing is responsible for drug addiction is delusional.
The idea that doctors are so stupid as to not know Oxy is addictive is laughably untrue.
If you want to blame anyone blame the people ordering patients to consume opiates. The lack of supervision and education is the doctor’s responsibility not the drug maker. Every doctor in the US knows Oxy is addictive and has for a very long time. Doctors overprescribe OxyContin not pharmaceutical companies.
No one person is to blame and trying to do so will just leave you frustrated as that person passes the buck, this whole market is rotten from PBMs, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, Payors, Pharmacies and Providers - both individual doctors and institutions like clinics and hospitals that set guidelines for preferred treatment options and guidance of care.
I've emigrated but when I was still working in the US a co-worker of mine was given a 90 day script after an injury, which is far _far_ more than is appropriate for mild pain relief. He was a neuroscientist and enraged that a doctor would prescribe him such a stupidly dangerous quantity, he just grunted and bore it for two days then got over it.
...Except doctors are very busy people who often rely necessarily on drugmaker-published literature to update their knowledge on those products and ailments. They don't generally have the ability to conduct their own research. Therefore, your assertion that all doctors 'knew' that these drugs were addictive is simply untrue.
Now, there is definitely a spectrum of responsibility/guilt that could be applied to all parties here. In some ways, the buck even stops with the patient: it's their decision what to put in their mouth and swallow, and no one was holding a gun to their head and forcing them to take the meds they were prescribed. But that of course is a very skewed view on the subject of addiction.
The crux of the issue is how society decides to assign blame. Collectively, we seem have a hard time dumping more responsibility on patients. Plenty of doctors have been fined, lost licenses, and gone to prison. Heck, my own childhood physician lost his license. But we also understand that many doctors who made mistakes deserve some leniency because they were tasked with helping people in pain.
But the drug companies...it's hard to imagine that they deserve even a shred of clemency. Their only job was to produce a product and represent it truthfully. Their failure mode was knowing, made them vast sums, and destroyed many lives.
Purdue knowed about the drug was highly addictive in 2003. The raw components in Oxycontin were known to be highly addictive before the drug hit the market. Oxycontin was supposed to "solve" the addiction problem, thus it got special drug labeling saying it was less addictive than other drugs of its class.
They had data that it did not solve the problem but they massaged the data, and hid the data that showed it was addictive, and then later hid the data that after the drug was on the market of the ways it was being abused.
I upvoted you not because I believe Purdue shouldn't be held responsible but because doctors definitely contributed to this crisis. They are not innocent in all this. They've been benefiting from big pharma to push their drugs.
I think you may not have all the information here. People are coming forward and testifying that their Purdue bosses instructed them to lie to insurers in order to get prescribed opioids paid for.
There is evidence that they knowingly lied to doctors and patients telling them that fentanyl was safe and less addictive than many other lesser opioids.
There is evidence that they knowingly increased pressure on sales even after it came to light that opioids were much more addictive and lethal than they thought.
There is also evidence that the sacklers were heavily involved in all of this.
I'd say yes, they definitely contributed to the epidemic in a large way.
Not quite that simple. For one, oxy HAS been marketed to consumers (still one of only two countries in the world to allow Rx marketing to consumers - the other being New Zealand who is phasing it out and only introduced it as part of a trade agreement with the US).
Purdue also downplayed the addictiveness of new formulations in their advertising -to physicians-.
They also built disingenuous "self regulation" systems because they knew of the issue, and wanted to keep the wolves at bay, but the only thing the program was really designed to do was to shield Purdue. The very vast majority of over prescribing identified by this program was not reported to authorities until after the authorities had already acted (ie. when Purdue realized they would not lose any revenue from the report because the physician had already had his script writing ability pulled).
It was probably an exchange move funds between cold wallets. OpSec would dictate you need to move wallets as employees leave, leaks happen, any number of reasons.
When I first heard that states were looking to confiscate $5B from the Sackler family, I was pleasantly surprised, only to find out that they’re worth more than $13B.
As long as the financial punishment don’t outpace this kind of behavior among the wealthy, it’s really just a tax on them.
Hammurabi’s code [1]. “For example, if a doctor killed a rich patient, he would have his hands cut off, but if he killed a slave, only financial restitution was required“
It is a bit depressing that things are so similar today - it highlights some of the larger hidden failures of egalitarianism even while it is being celebrated.
While I totally agree that the Sacklers should be considered like a criminal organization conspiring to kill people and would deserve long jail time, there is another goal to this confiscation than punishment.
It is a way to change incentives. I don't know what part of their $13B wealth comes from opioids, but this tax made it suddenly far, far less profitable. They will make their calculation of what would have been a better course of action, but if they had found a way to stay within the law and only lost $3B in revenues, it would have been profitable.
Fines are an efficient way to regulate companies and always welcomed, even if insufficient.
Not only this is like a tax, but there is a randomness factor it: it depends on a court decision. A lot of companies are risk-adverse so such a fine can have a chilling multiplier.
I think the argument of the comment you're replying to is that it was profitable and they did make the calculation. They're left with $7B, which is a lot. It's hard to make $7B.
And the multiplier works in the other way. Because of the non-deterministic chance of whether you get caught and whether you get punished and whether all of this happens before you donate all your money to charitable causes and die, the expected value of your loss is a fraction of the fine. A truly effective penalty would fine them many times the illegal profit to account for that.
> How much of the profit was illegal and how would you go about quantifying that?
I mean, I haven't done a criminal investigation of the Sacklers, so I'm the wrong person to ask.
But on general principle - if the goal is to use fines to disincentivize future criminal behavior (which seems reasonable to me, but it's not the only factor at play in setting fines), you should treat all profit that was related to the criminal behavior as criminal and not try to reverse-engineer "How much money would they have made if they hadn't done this crime." Otherwise you're still incentivized to try 10 different legally-questionable strategies and keep the profit from the 9 that were found to be on the other side of the line.
As a concrete example, if Google's copying of Java interfaces were ruled illegal (and to be clear I don't think it should be), then an appropriate fine is (some multiple of) all profit from Android, not some attempt at retconning how much money Google would have made if they had used something other than Java or waited for OpenJDK.
(That's a fine, to be clear, not damages. Oracle's damages should be calculated by retconning how much they would have gained had Google kept the laws, and nothing more.)
I mean, the first step is establishing a second crime. What's the crime on which to say any profit since 2001 is related to a crime?
The company and some executives already plead guilty in 2007 to, essentially, false advertising, during the 1995-2001 period immediately after the drug was developed. During that time, "OxyContin brought in $2.8 billion in revenue for Purdue Pharma."[1] Double Jeopardy means that specific crime during that specific period is done and settled.
The company paid out $600 million in fines and the execs another ~$35 million. So that's 22% of revenue in fines in that instance. (I guess the courts didn't agree with your notion that fines should be 100+% of revenue.)
The New Yorker estimated in 2017 that OxyContin has brought in $35 billion in total revenue for Purdue[2]; if that's true, subtracting the 2.8 from earlier suggests that it produced $32 billion in revenue 2001-2017.
Did Purdue Pharma commit another crime (or the same mislabeling / false advertising kind of crime) after 2001?
Right, my claim is the first crime should have been penalized more harshly, if committing it was net profitable. I'm not involved in prosecuting the case so I can't tell you if any other crimes have been committed.
From what I can quickly find on the web, I'd estimate that they sold about $35 billion worth of Oxycontin. That doesn't include all of the other opioids they sold through Purdue and other affiliated companies. I'd say it's likely that the vast majority of the Sackler fortune is from Oxycontin.
If you rob a bank you can't just give the money back if you get caught, and you certainly can't just give half of it back.
> If you rob a bank you can't just give the money back if you get caught, and you certainly can't just give half of it back.
How much less oxycontin do you think they'd have sold if their advertising was less reprehensible?
Notably, Purdue produced some of the first extended-release opioid formulations on the market, which does have some real value even without exaggerated sales. It developed MS Contin (XR morphine) in 1984 and OxyContin (XR Oxycodone) in 1996. (CONTIN™ is Purdue's extended-release drug delivery system developed in the 70s.)
OxyContin was also the first "Abuse-deterrent Formulation" (ADF) approved by the FDA, for whatever value that has[1]. Today, ten such formulations are approved and of those, five are actually available.
So tl;dr, I don't think your metaphor is especially apt. They should be punished for their sales tactics, which were outrageous, but there seems to be this mentality that all opioid manufacture is evil, and I don't believe that.
The problem is that they used the XR aspect of it to argue (evidently without basis) that patients would not become addicted to it. There was loads of lobbying of the FDA/DEA, sending doctors to seminars in Hawaii, I even remember numerous op-eds in the NYT arguing that doctors were committing malpractice for undertreating pain. This led to the rise of the Pain Management Clinic, which primarily existed to prescribe opioids. Without the FDA/DEA lobbying by Purdue, these clinics would have been shut down by the DEA for prescribing too many opioids.
The message that this huge PR/Sales/Lobbying effort was sending was: XR opioids have a low addiction potential, and not prescribing them, or preventing them from being prescribed is malpractice and insensitive to patients that are in pain. I don't doubt that many fewer people are in significant pain now, but we also have something like 4% of the entire U.S. population addicted to opioids.
So they are using financial records to claim that they are hiding assets...their evidence for this is...the financial records...that they have...already. How does that work?
And they went to the trouble of briefing against the Sacklers but don't explain what information they don't have already or aren't being given (i.e. why they believe something is being hidden). They just say: we have the records, boy there is a lot of them, we haven't gone through them all...but we know they aren't complete...the bois working hard there.
And why is the punishment related to individual wealth at all? Are limited liability companies not really limited when a state govt laywer changes their mind? If someone breaks the law then charge the person who breaks the law (the point here is a headline for a politican...which is unfortunate given that some people at the company were clearly acting improperly).
Also, transferring money to a Swiss bank account is not against the law. The lawyer quoted says it was moved offshore to "conceal" the source of money...that isn't how money laundering works. You need to move it to an account that won't report to the US authorities..this doesn't exist in Switzerland or anywhere in the world (a disadvantage of weak libel laws, I am pretty sure this would be actionable in Commonwealth law systems given how obviously erroneous and misleading the statement is).
The whole lawyer/politician thing in the US is entertaining as an outsider. It is utterly bizarre when considered using any kind of logic.
Also, transferring money to a Swiss bank account is not against the law. The lawyer quoted says it was moved offshore to "conceal" the source of money...that isn't how money laundering works.
Money laundering "works" through a chain of actions whose intent is to conceal the original source of said money. Some or all of those actions might be legal in themselves, it is the intent that counts - if you know the state is after your assets and you knowingly transfer those assets to a place the state can't find them (or even, would have trouble finding them, whether or not it could technically find them), then a pattern is fairly evident even if the transfer itself is legal.
Generally, playing games to make the state's job harder once it's investigating you is going to be a crime in the US (and many other places I believe). This is because the law has never been "blind" in the sense that it only considers actions - the law has always considered intentions and efforts to get results. Putting poison in a cup by itself isn't illegal, for example. Leaving that cup anywhere someone might drink from it on the other hand winds-up in crime.
Note that we don't need particular laws against structuring. Those engaged in structuring are engaging in actions intended to evade the original law and that's enough (though there may be precedent and laws in this regard, they aren't necessary).
Also note similar laws in other countries are cited.
As implied in my original post: after FATCA you cannot evade reporting at all by transferring money to any Swiss bank (there are some countries that don't comply with FATCA but every large financial institution complies fully). That is why the bank reported it to the AG.
It isn't. It is called fraudulent conveyance, and it is well covered by existing law (it is not fraud, it is not a criminal act). And the issue, as the article repeatedly says, is about personal wealth.
> So they are using financial records to claim that they are hiding assets...their evidence for this is...the financial records...that they have...already. How does that work?
Because they didn't get the financial records from the Sacklers. A Court would want a full financial disclosure as part of the settlement. Let's say the IRS audited a small business owner and settled with the owner for back taxes and fines. Well, the owner could have used some creative accounting to hide money, maybe contract out some work to an overseas company he controlled. This might not be illegal alone. But hiding his ownership of the overseas company could decrease the back taxes and fines he owned. So it's going to look bad for him if the IRS discovers his stake in the overseas company from his bank reporting a suspicious transaction.
The point of this is misdirection sometimes known as cooking the books, where you may have financial documents that say money exist, but they documents are separate from another set of books that says money doesn't exist.
You provide the cooked books to anyone who is suing you, Uncle Sam for taxes, and so on. Of course you have another set of documents that tells you where your money is, the point of having two set of books is to use one set to lie, misdirect, be non truthful in a court of law.
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And Limited Liability Corporations have good faith as part of their contract as a requirement. You commit purposeful fraud and the LLC will not shield you. The term for this is known as "Piercing the Veil" / "Piercing the Corporate Veil" and when the veil is pierced your assest away from the corporation can be seized for behavior you did as an agent of the corporation.
Now what are the rules of Piercing the Veil depends on your state for each state has different rules for Limited Liability Corporations, that said all 50 states have ways to pierce the veil for it is just a settled part of common law in the US.
This practice of different books has a nice phrase in Karnataka,India - "Ramana lekka, Krishnana lekka". Literally, "Rama's accounting and Krishna's accounting".
Rama is personification of righteousness and Krishna, while a God, is also considered mischievous.
I also hope society starts blacklisting: museums, society events, and NYC life. That will hurt them just as much as the money. The wife just tried to pay Courtney Love (yeah talk about drugs) 250k to attend her fashion show it's gross.
Provably false advertising = fraud. Paying DRs to prescribe and push false information = fraud/bribery. I am doubtful, but I hope the recent release of coordination comms on the Marino bill and response to block DEA enforcement of laws helps a RICO case. Imagine if all the big banks got together to figure out how to help each other get out of KYC.
And they are repeating the exact same playbook in India right as we speak. It makes me very angry.
Do you think doctors should be criminally prosecuted, along with the AMA? After all, they allow the prescription of OxyContin and physicians are the only ones who actually prescribe them. The FDA also regulates the sale of OxyContin.
If doctors prescribe harmful drugs without evaluating their efficacy and without questioning the marketing, aren’t they responsible ? They are ultimately the ones “pushing” OxyContin after all.
Should doctors not be allowed to prescribe OxyContin?
Very weird to me that the focus is on the people least responsible. Doctors, FDA, AMA all have to approve the prescription of OxyContin. The whole point of the FDA is to evaluate drugs using science instead of marketing.
If one accepts that Purdue is the party most responsible for the opioid crisis then one must consider doctors, the AMA, and the FDA all incompetent idiots, right?
OxyContin is a perfectly legitimate drug and it is reasonable for the FDA and AMA to sign off on its use. What isn't legitimate is doctors and pharmacists prescribing the drug over and over again when there was no reason to.
> If doctors prescribe harmful drugs without evaluating their efficacy
Doctors are highly trained specialists with limited time, and no, their job isn't to evaluate drug efficacy and safety. That's the FDA's job, and yes, to some extent the FDA failed here.
Is it really possible that from Me Too to Purdue to tech anti trust that we are really at the beginning of a true populist backlash against entrenched power?
I am skeptical but there are many threads spinning here.
(Also, to be clear, I think the current Warren tech-are-utilities thing is bozo)
No. These high profile "takedowns" keeps hubris in check, and also keep the rabble happy while the rest of entrenched power carries on being entrenched and powerful.
We're in the second inning actually, not at the beginning.
It started with the post great recession, Occupy Wall Street movement. That was the first major populist movement in the US in the 21st century. Even though that largely failed to result in anything draconian (fortunately), the US banking system was brought under far stricter control. The Fed with the Treasury is capable of dictating almost everything about the businesses of the large financial institutions. Today the US financial system is by far the strongest and safest financial system of any major economy. It's due in part to that populist response after the crash.
Trump's election was in fact also a massive populist backlash, against electing more of the same political dynasties (Clinton / Bush) that had come to rule the US. Trump defeated powerful, massively well-funded representatives of both entrenched dynasties to win the Presidency (which tells you just how dramatically voters were willing to reject a continuation of the old). Trump is the first populist President that the US has had in a century. Nearly every organization and individual that was part of the entrenched establishment was against Trump and he won regardless. And no matter what people think of Trump, his election will represent a permanent split with the past when it comes to the US political system. Things will never be the same, to put it mildly. AOC, as one example, is in Congress solely due to this cultural shift, new outcomes are possible (variations of Democratic Socialists were exceptionally rare in the past; they won't be rare in the near future). Obama was also partially responsible for and representative of this process that is underway; it's no coincidence he won immediately following the great recession crash, as the backlash and desire for a different direction is part of what made him possible (Hillary Clinton or McCain win that election otherwise).
One thing missing from this narrative is that Trump lost the popular vote and that barely half of eligible voters even participated. That said, the seven faithless electoral votes do underscore a theme of disapproval during the 2016 election.
The system is broken, yes. But I think the point being made is that Trump received many millions of votes in spite of all Democrat and Republican contenders against him because of a 'populist backlash' against the status quo.
Separately from your rhetoric, Trump has perpetrated many chances in law and practice that benefit really wealthy people, exactly like the Sackler. These include massive tax cuts for really wealthy people, and reducing fines and legal exposure for wealthy people. He's the opposite of a reaction to reign in wealthy people. He is a rabble rouser who uses his rhetorical power to make actions that at least in taxes and wealth only hurt poor, populist supporting people.
> Trump has perpetrated many chances in law and practice that benefit really wealthy people... These include massive tax cuts for really wealthy people
Basically: no. First, Trump can't make law; he can only sign what congress puts before him. Second, while he can make executive actions, I don't recall any of those that benefit "really wealthy people." But I might just be forgetting, please remind me.
If you're referring to the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" (TCJA), which was passed by Congress and signed by Trump, still no. The US largely does not tax wealth at all; it did not directly tax wealth before TCJA and doesn't after, either.
The only indirect wealth tax is the tax on capital gains and dividends, which basically didn't change under TCJA. You still have 0, 15, and 20% long-term / qualified brackets, with the same additional 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax ("NIIT") for high-earners retained. (NIIT was added under Obama as a follow-up legislation to the Affordable Care Act.)
Those rates and brackets basically didn't change. The top marginal Federal rate on LTCG is still 23.8% and the qualifying income brackets didn't shift substantially.
> and reducing fines and legal exposure for wealthy people
For example?
> He's the opposite of a reaction to reign in wealthy people.
No, being wealthy means that the Sacklers belong to a class that our system is designed to protect. They will not face prison time, and they will remain billionaires even after the lawsuits and settlements. The only time someone who belongs to their class goes to prison is if they fuck with another rich person's money.
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[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadPurdue would immediately declare insolvency with just any one settlement. These transfers are the first big-item ticket you would be looking at.
In this situation, who is the creditor that was defrauded by the conveyances in question at the time of conveyance?
The Sacklers' biggest self-payments were in 2008-2011 per the article's figure and actually got smaller in later years, with data only through 2016.
It's not clear that at any point for which we have data, the Sacklers "knew" their company was facing future financial liabilities that put it into bankrupcy. Did they make self-payments from August 2019 on? I don't think the article says either way.
While they might be rich, reprehensible people who made money by selling legal, but highly addictive drugs - its not as if they tried to pull money out just before a huge liability came up.
They and others were engaged in massive production and sale of opiates, even as the news reported increasing number of opiate deaths.
I'm not in favor of pinning everything on the last unlucky bastard standing around, but taking profits now when you can expect future corporate liabilities should be illegal.
As the sibling comment says, anyone or any corporation with assets is a target for potential future litigation, with or without merit. That cannot be the basis for what makes profit-taking fraudulent, or companies could never pay owners a dividend.
> They and others were engaged in massive production and sale of opiates, even as the news reported increasing number of opiate deaths.
I basically disagree with this premise. The media reporting on opiate deaths is misleading.
* IMO, production and sale of opiates is broadly a public good. To the extent that people are suffering, and opiates are an effective treatment for that pain, having opiates available is a boon. Some of the recent restrictions on prescribing due to the "crisis" are overbearing for the majority of doctors and patients, and probably cause net increase in suffering in the country.
* Rate of conversion from on-label opioid prescription to addiction ("opioid use disorder") is lowish; this metastudy[1] claims 8-12% on average, but the 95% CI is anywhere from 3-17% and I'm not sure what they're measuring the percentage of (i.e., long-term prescriptions might both be more represented in the data and have higher conversion rates) — I doubt 8-12% of people who get 3 days of vicodin for their wisdom teeth extraction develop an opiate use disorder. They also point out that some studies showed misuse rates below 1% and "significant variability remains in this literature." We should expect these rates to fall as tighter prescription quantities from the last several years impact "leftover" pill rates.
* The rate of conversion from prescription opioid addiction to heroin is low; 4-6% per the government.[2]
* Overall opioid-involved overdose annual deaths in the US rose from 8000 in 1999 to 47600 in 2017; of those, the prescription-involved number rose by 13600 deaths (+300%), from 3400. Conversely, the non-prescription-involved deaths rose from by 26000 deaths (+465%), from 4600.[3](Figs 3-4) 26000/39600 = ~66%. (The population has also grown about 17% over that period, but that doesn't change the calculus too much.)
* Therefore: the overall growth pattern in opioid deaths in the last two decades is largely accounted for by heroin and other non-Rx use, which are a tiny population with a very high (and rising) death rate. The rising death rate is mostly due to the surge in black market sale of fentanyl as "heroin."[3] (esp. figures 4-5 and associated text) (Perhaps as a result of DEA and other restriction on the supply of the relatively safer, but less dense, heroin, and restriction on supply of the vastly safer prescription opioids.)
* Notably, the number of non-fentanyl-involved prescription opioid-involved deaths has actually been in decline since 2011![3] (fig. 4.), despite a rising population. Let me echo that since it's really important: prescription opioid-involved overdose, ex fentanyl, both in number and per capita rate, HAS BEEN IN DECLINE SINCE 2011! Why doesn't any news story on opioids in the US headline with that? The primary reason the overall prescription opiate-involved death rate hasn't tracked that decline is rising co-(ab)use with illicit fentanyl, and its relatively higher death rate.
If we could wave a magic wand and wipe (illicit) fentanyl off the earth, our annual opioid death rate would fall by something like half.
Given we don't have a magic wand, what can we do? Obviously we can't stop fentanyl from entering our borders or being synthesized illicitly here. We can (and have) leaned on illicit fentanyl-producing countries like China and Mexico to make those businesses less lucrative. We can do harm reduction things for the vulnerable population — which is mostly heroin users. We could legalize he...
Your comment does not help make that case for corporate accounting fraud, because none of that context suggests to any reasonable person that an immensely profitable company is facing imminent bankrupcy.
The Sacklers's aggressive sales tactics were awful and I get that people hate them and don't like seeing them "get away with it." But this article does not illustrate a crime.
> that an immensely profitable company is facing imminent bankrupcy.
An immensely profitable company with multiple states and individuals lined up to sue it, whose principals know that they engaged in repeated (many already known) acts of deception and fraud to earn a non-negligible portion of profits, who were at the highest levels and thereby cannot claim ignorance is entirely likely to realize that should an adverse judgment be entered into, the damages may well approach a level that threatens solvency.
Realize that we're not just talking awful, aggressive sales tactics. We're talking willful deception and active hiding, obfuscating of research that showed increased levels of addiction that were instead being marketed as less addictive, more beneficial, in the context of a medical product. Aggressive sales tactics are what car dealers do. Wilful, fraudulent misrepresentation of the benefits and side effects of a prescription drug, to the detriment of individuals and societies, is a whole other level.
Purdue is going to declare bankruptcy eminently, that is one reason the settlements here are so soft - the government is trying to get what it can before they offshore everything.
To elaborate, I don't see where the article states they wired money from their company to their private accounts right before declaring bankrupcy. The article instead seems to be describing shuffling of their personal assets between accounts.
My contention is that nothing in this article shows or even purports that the Sacklers committed a corporate accounting crime. Apparently people disagree with the position but I haven't seen any greatly articulated arguments why I'm mistaken.
Wiring around your own lawfully obtained money isn't a crime. Taking profits from your private company that isn't facing bankrupcy (2008-2016) broadly isn't a crime.
Negotiating a different deal with State's Attornies than the highest offering bid by the SA's also isn't a crime. It's not the family's lowest offer; it's the mutually-agreed settlement.
There's a lot of reason not to like the Sacklers or Purdue Pharma! And there's a lot of reasons they should maybe lose some money or go to jail! Those reasons are just unrelated to the contents of this article — which is stirring up shit that looks bad to laypeople but isn't criminal.
So the potential exists for them to commit a crime should they face personal fines. It's not uncommon for people to hide assets during legal proceedings to reduce their liability.
There's a reason, when someone is under investigation, that they're not allowed to leave the country because it's easy to just not come back if they're charged. The same applies to money, it's easy to make money inaccessible which is why assets are often frozen during criminal probes.
Is it? Does being more wealthy increase your liability in some way? Is the huge crime a federal or state crime, and can you point me to any reference? (I'm sure claiming to be insolvent and unable to pay a civil suit when you have hidden assets is a type of fraud. But, that is not what happened here. Forbes estimates the family's worth at about $13 billion; no one is making the claim that they are bankrupt or unable to pay settlements / judgments.)
In general, in the US, wealth is private information between you and the IRS. There are judicial exceptions, certainly — you can't lie about your wealth in sworn testimony at trial, for example. But the Sacklers' suits did not go to trial — they settled outside of court.
> this article is basically telling us that they're dramatically understating their wealth to minimize the settlement damage.
$1 billion over a period of 10 years is not a huge chunk of $13 billion, IMO; and that's just the amounts moved a decade ago. It isn't clear all of it ended up "hidden." I'm also not sure of the mechanism by which understating your wealth minimizes settlement damage unless you actually claim insolvency.
What is the news here? Earning billions from owning and operating a business is not a crime.
More concisely, here is a quote, directly from the article: "But the attorneys general of a majority of states, including New York and Massachusetts, are balking at the proposed deal, contending that the Sackler family has siphoned off company profits that should be used to pay for the billions of dollars in damage caused by opioids."
As someone pointed out elsewhere, a lot of this money was moved out almost a decade ago, well before there was the possibility of huge civil judgements.
> ... suggesting that the family tried to shield wealth as it faced a raft of litigation over its role in the opioid crisis.
If you are not aware of the reporting on Purdue and how they directly contributed to the opioid crisis, start with this fantastic exposé from the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
Nobody addicted to opium was “tricked” into it. All legal opium is prescribed by a licensed doctor for godsakes!
Fining them isn’t helping people with opiate addiction. If we were to bankrupt the Sackler family tomorrow nobody addicted to opium is magically going to kick the habit.
Highly addictive drugs aren't a thing you just start and stop taking... Opioids are intensely addictive and Purdue repeatedly marketed Oxycotin as a non-addictive Opioid, there is even video of a Sackler talking about how much the sales team should be pushing the non-addictive qualities[1] as a benefit when dealing with Doctors. They also used the ye olde drug rep hard sell sales tactics to push it on Doctors in exchange for monetary compensation and in kind compensation when the US made direct monetary compensation illegal.
Purdue is a huge part of this crisis, but they shouldn't be singled out - the marketing that pharma companies engage is constantly contributing to the ill health of Americans through toxicity, unnecessary side effects, stress from financial pressures and, sometimes, direct poisoning.
Please do a bit more research into this crisis and it's causes.
1. Specifically, false qualities that Purdue actively hide evidence of.
The idea that marketing is responsible for drug addiction is delusional.
The idea that doctors are so stupid as to not know Oxy is addictive is laughably untrue.
If you want to blame anyone blame the people ordering patients to consume opiates. The lack of supervision and education is the doctor’s responsibility not the drug maker. Every doctor in the US knows Oxy is addictive and has for a very long time. Doctors overprescribe OxyContin not pharmaceutical companies.
If you want to play a blame game there is no way Purdue comes out on top. Doctors are the ones who put opiates in peoples hands https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6140023/es
I've emigrated but when I was still working in the US a co-worker of mine was given a 90 day script after an injury, which is far _far_ more than is appropriate for mild pain relief. He was a neuroscientist and enraged that a doctor would prescribe him such a stupidly dangerous quantity, he just grunted and bore it for two days then got over it.
Now, there is definitely a spectrum of responsibility/guilt that could be applied to all parties here. In some ways, the buck even stops with the patient: it's their decision what to put in their mouth and swallow, and no one was holding a gun to their head and forcing them to take the meds they were prescribed. But that of course is a very skewed view on the subject of addiction.
The crux of the issue is how society decides to assign blame. Collectively, we seem have a hard time dumping more responsibility on patients. Plenty of doctors have been fined, lost licenses, and gone to prison. Heck, my own childhood physician lost his license. But we also understand that many doctors who made mistakes deserve some leniency because they were tasked with helping people in pain.
But the drug companies...it's hard to imagine that they deserve even a shred of clemency. Their only job was to produce a product and represent it truthfully. Their failure mode was knowing, made them vast sums, and destroyed many lives.
NPR story from 2005 - https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=506167...
I think it's unfair to say that was general knowledge before 2017 or so.
Reporting about Reporting in 2003 - https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/orlando-sentinel-o... (and the pressure applied by Perdue Pharma on the paper after)
2005 - https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=506167...
2007 - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20327132/ns/health-health_care/t/p...
They had data that it did not solve the problem but they massaged the data, and hid the data that showed it was addictive, and then later hid the data that after the drug was on the market of the ways it was being abused.
Misleading Doctors and the FDA since 1996
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...
There is evidence that they knowingly lied to doctors and patients telling them that fentanyl was safe and less addictive than many other lesser opioids.
There is evidence that they knowingly increased pressure on sales even after it came to light that opioids were much more addictive and lethal than they thought.
There is also evidence that the sacklers were heavily involved in all of this.
I'd say yes, they definitely contributed to the epidemic in a large way.
Purdue also downplayed the addictiveness of new formulations in their advertising -to physicians-.
They also built disingenuous "self regulation" systems because they knew of the issue, and wanted to keep the wolves at bay, but the only thing the program was really designed to do was to shield Purdue. The very vast majority of over prescribing identified by this program was not reported to authorities until after the authorities had already acted (ie. when Purdue realized they would not lose any revenue from the report because the physician had already had his script writing ability pulled).
/pedantry
As long as the financial punishment don’t outpace this kind of behavior among the wealthy, it’s really just a tax on them.
Pushing that much narcotics on people normally lands you in jail.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
I think it would take on online generator/database of such slogans to see how pointless and ridiculous they are.
It is a way to change incentives. I don't know what part of their $13B wealth comes from opioids, but this tax made it suddenly far, far less profitable. They will make their calculation of what would have been a better course of action, but if they had found a way to stay within the law and only lost $3B in revenues, it would have been profitable.
Fines are an efficient way to regulate companies and always welcomed, even if insufficient.
Not only this is like a tax, but there is a randomness factor it: it depends on a court decision. A lot of companies are risk-adverse so such a fine can have a chilling multiplier.
And the multiplier works in the other way. Because of the non-deterministic chance of whether you get caught and whether you get punished and whether all of this happens before you donate all your money to charitable causes and die, the expected value of your loss is a fraction of the fine. A truly effective penalty would fine them many times the illegal profit to account for that.
> A truly effective penalty would fine them many times the illegal profit to account for that.
How much of the profit was illegal and how would you go about quantifying that?
I mean, I haven't done a criminal investigation of the Sacklers, so I'm the wrong person to ask.
But on general principle - if the goal is to use fines to disincentivize future criminal behavior (which seems reasonable to me, but it's not the only factor at play in setting fines), you should treat all profit that was related to the criminal behavior as criminal and not try to reverse-engineer "How much money would they have made if they hadn't done this crime." Otherwise you're still incentivized to try 10 different legally-questionable strategies and keep the profit from the 9 that were found to be on the other side of the line.
As a concrete example, if Google's copying of Java interfaces were ruled illegal (and to be clear I don't think it should be), then an appropriate fine is (some multiple of) all profit from Android, not some attempt at retconning how much money Google would have made if they had used something other than Java or waited for OpenJDK.
(That's a fine, to be clear, not damages. Oracle's damages should be calculated by retconning how much they would have gained had Google kept the laws, and nothing more.)
The company and some executives already plead guilty in 2007 to, essentially, false advertising, during the 1995-2001 period immediately after the drug was developed. During that time, "OxyContin brought in $2.8 billion in revenue for Purdue Pharma."[1] Double Jeopardy means that specific crime during that specific period is done and settled.
The company paid out $600 million in fines and the execs another ~$35 million. So that's 22% of revenue in fines in that instance. (I guess the courts didn't agree with your notion that fines should be 100+% of revenue.)
The New Yorker estimated in 2017 that OxyContin has brought in $35 billion in total revenue for Purdue[2]; if that's true, subtracting the 2.8 from earlier suggests that it produced $32 billion in revenue 2001-2017.
Did Purdue Pharma commit another crime (or the same mislabeling / false advertising kind of crime) after 2001?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/11drug-web.html
[2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-tha...
If you rob a bank you can't just give the money back if you get caught, and you certainly can't just give half of it back.
How much less oxycontin do you think they'd have sold if their advertising was less reprehensible?
Notably, Purdue produced some of the first extended-release opioid formulations on the market, which does have some real value even without exaggerated sales. It developed MS Contin (XR morphine) in 1984 and OxyContin (XR Oxycodone) in 1996. (CONTIN™ is Purdue's extended-release drug delivery system developed in the 70s.)
OxyContin was also the first "Abuse-deterrent Formulation" (ADF) approved by the FDA, for whatever value that has[1]. Today, ten such formulations are approved and of those, five are actually available.
So tl;dr, I don't think your metaphor is especially apt. They should be punished for their sales tactics, which were outrageous, but there seems to be this mentality that all opioid manufacture is evil, and I don't believe that.
[1]: https://anesthesiology.pubs.asahq.org/article.aspx?articleid...
The message that this huge PR/Sales/Lobbying effort was sending was: XR opioids have a low addiction potential, and not prescribing them, or preventing them from being prescribed is malpractice and insensitive to patients that are in pain. I don't doubt that many fewer people are in significant pain now, but we also have something like 4% of the entire U.S. population addicted to opioids.
So they are using financial records to claim that they are hiding assets...their evidence for this is...the financial records...that they have...already. How does that work?
And they went to the trouble of briefing against the Sacklers but don't explain what information they don't have already or aren't being given (i.e. why they believe something is being hidden). They just say: we have the records, boy there is a lot of them, we haven't gone through them all...but we know they aren't complete...the bois working hard there.
And why is the punishment related to individual wealth at all? Are limited liability companies not really limited when a state govt laywer changes their mind? If someone breaks the law then charge the person who breaks the law (the point here is a headline for a politican...which is unfortunate given that some people at the company were clearly acting improperly).
Also, transferring money to a Swiss bank account is not against the law. The lawyer quoted says it was moved offshore to "conceal" the source of money...that isn't how money laundering works. You need to move it to an account that won't report to the US authorities..this doesn't exist in Switzerland or anywhere in the world (a disadvantage of weak libel laws, I am pretty sure this would be actionable in Commonwealth law systems given how obviously erroneous and misleading the statement is).
The whole lawyer/politician thing in the US is entertaining as an outsider. It is utterly bizarre when considered using any kind of logic.
Money laundering "works" through a chain of actions whose intent is to conceal the original source of said money. Some or all of those actions might be legal in themselves, it is the intent that counts - if you know the state is after your assets and you knowingly transfer those assets to a place the state can't find them (or even, would have trouble finding them, whether or not it could technically find them), then a pattern is fairly evident even if the transfer itself is legal.
Generally, playing games to make the state's job harder once it's investigating you is going to be a crime in the US (and many other places I believe). This is because the law has never been "blind" in the sense that it only considers actions - the law has always considered intentions and efforts to get results. Putting poison in a cup by itself isn't illegal, for example. Leaving that cup anywhere someone might drink from it on the other hand winds-up in crime.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring
Perfectly legal activities. Illegal as hell when performed with intent to evade reporting.
Also note similar laws in other countries are cited.
The company was charged and convicted of a felony which would pierce the corporate veil.
No. The transfers were (a) personal wealth and (b) a decade ago.
Because they didn't get the financial records from the Sacklers. A Court would want a full financial disclosure as part of the settlement. Let's say the IRS audited a small business owner and settled with the owner for back taxes and fines. Well, the owner could have used some creative accounting to hide money, maybe contract out some work to an overseas company he controlled. This might not be illegal alone. But hiding his ownership of the overseas company could decrease the back taxes and fines he owned. So it's going to look bad for him if the IRS discovers his stake in the overseas company from his bank reporting a suspicious transaction.
You provide the cooked books to anyone who is suing you, Uncle Sam for taxes, and so on. Of course you have another set of documents that tells you where your money is, the point of having two set of books is to use one set to lie, misdirect, be non truthful in a court of law.
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And Limited Liability Corporations have good faith as part of their contract as a requirement. You commit purposeful fraud and the LLC will not shield you. The term for this is known as "Piercing the Veil" / "Piercing the Corporate Veil" and when the veil is pierced your assest away from the corporation can be seized for behavior you did as an agent of the corporation.
Now what are the rules of Piercing the Veil depends on your state for each state has different rules for Limited Liability Corporations, that said all 50 states have ways to pierce the veil for it is just a settled part of common law in the US.
Rama is personification of righteousness and Krishna, while a God, is also considered mischievous.
Provably false advertising = fraud. Paying DRs to prescribe and push false information = fraud/bribery. I am doubtful, but I hope the recent release of coordination comms on the Marino bill and response to block DEA enforcement of laws helps a RICO case. Imagine if all the big banks got together to figure out how to help each other get out of KYC.
And they are repeating the exact same playbook in India right as we speak. It makes me very angry.
https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1093953731756867584
If doctors prescribe harmful drugs without evaluating their efficacy and without questioning the marketing, aren’t they responsible ? They are ultimately the ones “pushing” OxyContin after all.
Should doctors not be allowed to prescribe OxyContin?
Very weird to me that the focus is on the people least responsible. Doctors, FDA, AMA all have to approve the prescription of OxyContin. The whole point of the FDA is to evaluate drugs using science instead of marketing.
If one accepts that Purdue is the party most responsible for the opioid crisis then one must consider doctors, the AMA, and the FDA all incompetent idiots, right?
OxyContin is a perfectly legitimate drug and it is reasonable for the FDA and AMA to sign off on its use. What isn't legitimate is doctors and pharmacists prescribing the drug over and over again when there was no reason to.
I.e., "pill mills."
Doctors are highly trained specialists with limited time, and no, their job isn't to evaluate drug efficacy and safety. That's the FDA's job, and yes, to some extent the FDA failed here.
I am skeptical but there are many threads spinning here.
(Also, to be clear, I think the current Warren tech-are-utilities thing is bozo)
It started with the post great recession, Occupy Wall Street movement. That was the first major populist movement in the US in the 21st century. Even though that largely failed to result in anything draconian (fortunately), the US banking system was brought under far stricter control. The Fed with the Treasury is capable of dictating almost everything about the businesses of the large financial institutions. Today the US financial system is by far the strongest and safest financial system of any major economy. It's due in part to that populist response after the crash.
Trump's election was in fact also a massive populist backlash, against electing more of the same political dynasties (Clinton / Bush) that had come to rule the US. Trump defeated powerful, massively well-funded representatives of both entrenched dynasties to win the Presidency (which tells you just how dramatically voters were willing to reject a continuation of the old). Trump is the first populist President that the US has had in a century. Nearly every organization and individual that was part of the entrenched establishment was against Trump and he won regardless. And no matter what people think of Trump, his election will represent a permanent split with the past when it comes to the US political system. Things will never be the same, to put it mildly. AOC, as one example, is in Congress solely due to this cultural shift, new outcomes are possible (variations of Democratic Socialists were exceptionally rare in the past; they won't be rare in the near future). Obama was also partially responsible for and representative of this process that is underway; it's no coincidence he won immediately following the great recession crash, as the backlash and desire for a different direction is part of what made him possible (Hillary Clinton or McCain win that election otherwise).
Trump is the kind of populist you get when the first one fails. Trump has many former Obama voters.
Trump lost the popular vote. It wasn't a populist backlash, it was a broken system.
Basically: no. First, Trump can't make law; he can only sign what congress puts before him. Second, while he can make executive actions, I don't recall any of those that benefit "really wealthy people." But I might just be forgetting, please remind me.
If you're referring to the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" (TCJA), which was passed by Congress and signed by Trump, still no. The US largely does not tax wealth at all; it did not directly tax wealth before TCJA and doesn't after, either.
The only indirect wealth tax is the tax on capital gains and dividends, which basically didn't change under TCJA. You still have 0, 15, and 20% long-term / qualified brackets, with the same additional 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax ("NIIT") for high-earners retained. (NIIT was added under Obama as a follow-up legislation to the Affordable Care Act.)
Those rates and brackets basically didn't change. The top marginal Federal rate on LTCG is still 23.8% and the qualifying income brackets didn't shift substantially.
> and reducing fines and legal exposure for wealthy people
For example?
> He's the opposite of a reaction to reign in wealthy people.
Well, we can definitely agree there :-).